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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Where DID I Put It?

Editors Note: (that's the Preogative you have when you are the Editor) This is the 500th entry of We're Just Sayin' and we hope to have a few thousand more to go.

My beloved needs to eat more blueberries. This perfectly plump, round, moist, sweet little taste of fruit heaven, is supposed to have a positive effect on memory. I have been eating tons of them everyday in hopes that the episodes of things like, ‘I’m on my phone shouting about the fact that I can’t find my phone,’ will seriously diminish. Or the frequency of the times when I’m holding my car keys and racing around the house looking for my car keys, will become fewer. My pal Soozie says everyday our lives begin with a treasure hunt. That’s certainly is true in our house.

A few years before one of my favorite uncles died, he got lost finding his way to his house. We found him not far away sitting in a parking lot in tears. It was the last time he drove, but it was also the first time I had ever seen him frightened. He was an artist and a flyer and had been under enemy fire in WWII, so seeing him devastated by a trip to the grocery was beyond horrible. But now it happens to me. It’s not that I get lost, it’s just that I can’t remember the best route to get somewhere, so I find myself driving in the wrong direction.

When you are young you have so little to remember that your memory appears infallible. You can remember names and dates and even where you put some treasured or essential item... like a recipe or the keys to your house. But as you get older your mind fills up with crap and before you know it, you don’t remember your spouse’s date of birth. And it’s not only that your mind fills with poop. We are now forced to remember hundreds of words and numbers so that our lives remain secure—passwords and log-ins and God knows how many bank passcodes and account numbers. Here’s an embarrassing example. My friend Kerry and I have a joint checking/debit account we use for entertainment—dining out, shows, movies, etc. It prevents us from having to do that “divide up the check” thing. We just use our ‘card.’ A few weeks ago I thought I better check to see how much money we had left in the account. (We have been having a great time spending). I couldn’t remember our password or ID. I called Kerry to see if she remembered. No luck. Neither of us had any idea about the names or codes we (to be honest I) had selected. So I had to go to my branch and find out—yes it was mortifying and yes, I did finally write and put them in a safe place, but I’ll be darned if I remember where that is.

Anyway, that is the reason Barack Obama should be the President. Was that a stupid transition or what? OK I’ll try again. There are now a generation of people who understand all the technical information some of us deign to forget. They thrive on it. John McCain lives in a world where other people remember or do stuff for him, a world where fighting a war rather than negotiating a peace makes sense, where bread costs a $1 a loaf and milk will always be $2 a gallon. Where Hummers are normal and desirable transportation (whether or not you need to go off road), so drill more rather than look for alternatives for oil , and the military knows what’s good for the country. Obama is one of those people who gets the change in technology and the way we will have to live in the future. It’s why everybody’s kids love him. They don’t see his race, age, or lack of experience as a negative – they get him and his rhetoric about what their lives might be. That’s the transition, now we can go back to that’s why Obama should be the President. It’s all about looking at the world in a different way. It’s like when someone asks you how to describe where you live. You can say the street, the town, the country, the world, or the earth. It’s just a different way to think about who you are and from where you come.

We all need to move past the 50’s 60’s or even 90’s thinking about the possibilities in life. Who would have imagined –even 10 years ago—a “Bluetooth” or an “iPhone”? Ten years ago we were carrying cell phones that were bigger than our TV’s – well maybe not HDTV’s... but who would have considered those? Or the “iPod” or a “Blackberry” Or the Facebook, MySpace. Nor would we ever have conceived of how annoying they can be. Who would ever have conceived of all the stuff we now have available? Other than the inventors or the geeks. There is a generation of older people that can learn to use these incredible tools, but they don’t really understand the impact. They think about the limits rather than what can be limitless. (Thankfully we’re not that generation).

The technology has changed the culture—for the good and the bad. The bad news—people are not as courteous about space, and manners seem lost in an airport or on a train where everyone is having a conversation with someone for whom you don’t give a damn. Politics has become impersonal and distant – voice mails and e-mails have replaced face to face contact. But the good news is that people around the globe are connected and interdependent in unimaginable ways. The leader of our nation has to understand all this in a way that someone over 70 never will. John McCain might be a nice guy (with terrible judgment about the commercials he runs), but I bet he doesn’t remember where he puts his keys and more importantly, his mentality will always be the Cold War instead of Hot Link.

Agreed...it appears as a clumsy transition into why Obama should be president, but sort of amusing anyway.

Side Note of Caution: Not all kids think Obama is the next coming. 'Belle' (the college junior and Disney caracter you met)is not in the Obama for President camp, and surprisingly, neither are many of her student friends. All of them can, however, send text messages at 5000 words per minute using some new, yet to be recorded language.